Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" The problems in the Russian novel are quite similar to the problems of Turkish nationalism and Turkish culture, which was something that I grew up thinking didn't affect me very much because my parents didn't really talk about it. "

Elif Batuman

Problems

Parents

Thinking

Related Quotes:

" As a novelist, you write about social mores, but not everything can be explained. "

" The first modern novel was already a product, even an expression, of negative criticism: 'Don Quixote' contains a quite explicit critique of the chivalric romance and its insufficiency to account for the way real life feels when you get up in the morning in 17th-century Spain. "

" I love the novelist's freedom of going into different people's subjectivity and being able to work with them as characters. "

" No time you spend writing will be wasted - even if you write something that's bad. "

" Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams, there are things about the human condition that we can learn only from a systematic study of literature. "

" For a Nabokov fan, paging through 'Fine Lines,' which includes a critical introduction and several essayistic evaluations of Nabokov's scientific oeuvre, can feel a bit like reading the second half of 'Pale Fire': one is confronted by a content-rich, almost dementedly tangential commentary on an increasingly inscrutable work. "

" If, for a moment, it seemed that September 11th could be identified with Iraq, the illusion was short-lived. "

" I grew up thinking that it was immoral to idealize the past because, in the past, there was slavery and no penicillin. "

Elif Batuman

In The Past

Thinking

" It's kind of an embarrassing story - that's why it's called 'The Idiot.' But looking back at your past self, you see that this person had reasons for everything she did. There's a whole lot of awkwardness, but really, what should one be embarrassed about? "

" My parents were born into a secular country. They met in Turkey's top medical school, moved to America in the nineteen-seventies, and became researchers and professors. "

" I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they were. "

" When you walk around, you have all this stuff rattling around in your head, things that have happened to you, things you have read. Life is just life, and you get what you get out of it. "

" Awkwardness is the consciousness of a false position. "

" The novel is like a melancholy form. It's about some kind of disillusionment with the way things are versus the idea of how they could be or how they used to be. "

Elif Batuman

Kind

Some

" Why is there an end of the year? Because the calendar imposes numerical order on time. There is a natural fitness in the celebration of the New Year, a holiday of numbers imposed on things, with lists, as well as with Advent calendars and songs like 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.' "

" I do think of 'The Idiot,' in a way, as a self-standing book about a certain struggle to make meaning, the struggle for a girl to find meaning outside of the romance plot. "

" There's definitely a culture of Russian literature in Turkey. And in the U.S. too, to an extent - especially Dostoevsky. "

" From an early age, my favorite thing to read was novels. For years, when I was writing only nonfiction, still I was reading almost exclusively novels. It's weird to be producing something that you don't consume. It feels really alienating. "

" I like to think that I know a lot of words, but I definitely don't know all of them. "

" I've developed this love of trashy Russian literature. There's a women's detective series that I was obsessed with for a while, written by Aleksandra Marinina, the former chief of police. "

" One of the most painful parts of a breakup is having the feeling that your life is a story, and then the other person leaves and takes the story with them. And you're left there without it. You're left in this version of life that's basically a succession of events and interactions that don't seem to be going anywhere. "

" I find something very appealing about taking literature very literally. "

" Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time,' especially 'Time Regained,' made me think differently about what the novel is and can do. Then I forgot about it, then reread it and remembered again. "

" Listing and counting have a spooky, magical power, and the holiday season is a spooky, magical time. "

" It's important not to censor yourself and not to get upset or demoralized when you write bad stuff. "

" I don't believe in being ashamed about not having read things. "

" Russian literature got me interested in what literature means. "

Elif Batuman

Interested

Literature

" By the time I got to college, the Cold War was basically over. "

" Every time a meteor comes close to the earth, we all think about the end of the world - but our internal soundtrack doesn't turn off. We're also thinking about pizza or passing a slow tractor or making a turn, and for a magical instant, our lives seem to be in conversation with the stars. "

" I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.' "